Look to the Sun: By Weston
McDaniel, (The Beechhurst Press, New York.)
Weston McDaniel’s book of poems, Look to the Sun,
reminds us of the Surya Gita by Dr. James H. Cousins. To Dr. Cousins the
Buddhist banner floating serenely over the turmoil of the market place is a
symbol of conquest, of man over Nature and of peace over the mind of man. This
is how the East looks to the Sun, the inner illuminer of the mind, the symbol
of that which impels our higher intuition. Weston McDaniel, however, would like
to look at the Sun in the way in which the eagle is said to gaze at the Sun and
sharpen its sight. In a poem entitled Be as the Eagle he writes,
“If the mind tumbles
In whirlwinds of doubt,
If the teeth clench
And the jaws lock in pain,
Be as the eagle,
Feather torn eagle blown violently
From perch in the crags….
Ride in ecstasy
The storm!”
He gives to us the active faith of a younger
generation which would look to the Sun as the symbol of the progressive forces
of light and life struggling against die ewige finsterniss, ‘Devils and
witches’ stand as symbols of the darker forces of life which convert life’s
aspiration into a walpurgisnachtstraum, and it is from such bondage to
the devil’s saturnalia of the Brokenberg that the author would fain freedom
mankind, which like Faust stands at the cross-ways of life.
Didactic poetry is my abhorrence, said a poet of an
elder generation. Though McDaniel sees in intolerance, the absence of spiritual
freedom, the devil of the age, he avoids sermonising over the need for
tolerance and political justice. With true poetic insight he weighs the affairs
of nations and of individuals in the only balance the poet knows, the
emotional. The poet weighs human nature just as a scientist weighs the stars.
In a poem entitled Scales of grief he gives to us a picture of the
desolating effect of war, the product of intolerance as it affects the home. He
writes,
“Silence looms heavy in the cabin,
Heavy as iron weights suspended motionless
On scales of grief.
A picture of doves buried inch-deep in soot
Hangs off-balance over the fire place
An old man rocks solemnly in his chair
Thumbing wrinkled pages of his Bible
The mother chokes
Holding back sobs.
A lamp burns at the window,
Two boys sit vacant eyed,
Frozen to their seats,
The sister slumps over the table
Propping her face with icy fingers,
The lame man hired for the chorus
Hums Yankee Doodle in raucous notes stirring
the silence,
Silence in the cabin
Where words glued to yellow sheet
Reveal:
Johnny...killed in action.”
Civilian poets like Tennyson have been accused of being war-mongers, by
depicting war attractively in the glory of drum and colours. If Weston
McDaniel’s attitude is pacifistic, it is because he has fought in the two World
Wars, and cherishes no illusions. The keynote of his poetry is that intolerance
is responsible for war, and that such intolerance exists as much in peace time
as in war time. He does not advocate a weak tolerance of wrong, or a helpless
endurance of evil, but he desires to let in the light of the mind in the darker
recesses of the human heart. In a series of vignettes entitled Breakfast in
the hills, he depicts the black passions of the white man. Brute Samson,
‘judge, jury, hangman all in one’ is a symbol of that intolerance which wooden
hearted men inflict upon the orphans of justice. Every society has its skeleton
in the closet, and instead of merely finding fault with other types of society,
it would do well to cleanse its own bosom. If we can import into our daily
lives a portion of that idealism with which we are very generous in things that
do not concern us, life would be much better for all of us. The black and
lawless passions may sometimes take a seductive aspect, leading the unwary
youth into webs of intrigue, as he seeks love amid the flame-spent ashes, but
whether it be false love or false hate the result is the same,
“Ignorance is the false clay of mind,
Dead root of thought,
Covered with slime of prejudice.
Ignorance makes the world turn back
Spinning futilely on axis of fate
Spinning orbits of decay.”
In a poem entitled Blunder of blunders he writes,
“Hate lies in the agony of mind,
Mind pierced by spurs of greed,
Torn by gaffs of fear,
Hate...startling as thunder,
Violent as storm.
Hate of the races,
Hate of the creeds,
Hate...the old blunder,
Blunder of blunders.
Stifling the heart.”
What is aesthetically ugly is intellectually false.
What is false is like darkness. It is not a positive quantity. It is merely the
absence of light. That is why the light is one, but the shadows are many.
While Weston McDanie1 does not mitigate the
influence of the powers of darkness, he does not despair of life. He tells us
that only wooden-hearted men stumble at the crossroads of decision. He bids us
take life as a joyous adventure, with time spanning the flow of centuries, with
bridges of joy, and tolls of grief. The poet’s outlook is incidentally a
refutation of the point of view of T. S. Eliot who sees the world coming to an
end with hollow men in the wasteland of life. He writes,
“We lie all night waiting for dawn,
Incredible dawn,
We wait…
Denying darkness,
Denying death…
We watch dawn
And the birds hurling to the winds
Breasts tinted with sun…
Surely the world ends not with a whimper,
But begins, begins..”
The poet’s outlook on life is ‘in tune with the
Sun’, for it is part of the elemental wisdom of Nature. In the silent trickle
of dawn, as well as in the rhythm of rain as it beats upon parched ground, he
sees the assertion of the powers of peace descending from the heavens like a
ray of joy from the stars. Mankind may be caught in the night of ages, and the
spirit of darkness may lie heavy like a drugged goddess insensate to the
crimson drama of life, but sleep conceals within it a dream, and a dream
leaping forth like a rainbow coloured fish out of the dark waters of life, may
be the symbol of hope. In the battle of life individual soldiers may draw black
straws of fate, but the darker powers may themselves be present as veiled
mourners in the drama of life. As long as life is like a child’s wisdom, pure
as a white flower, there is always the possibility of redemption. What is
wanted is an active faith which would boot back the hangman greed, and march
onward. In the ascent of life, fear like loose sands peeling from rocks may impede
progress, but the sage is he who climbs the hills of truth, even though it be
with bleeding feet.
Mc. Daniel does not believe in a cloistered virtue,
in a retreat from conflict. No soldier says Sauve qui puet. In a poem
entitled Steadfastly to man, he says,
“Joy comes to the hermit,
Doubting hermit,
Who in wrestling with self
Conquers image of fear that drove him to the hills,
Last ridge of the hills
To rot in loneliness.
Peace comes to the hermit
Hermit redeemed,
Who in shaking off rags of despair
Pins himself to love,
Welds himself steadfastly
To man.”
The poet takes his stand with average humanity, but
would fain be not only its soldier, but also its guide and counselor, and plead
with society on behalf of the soldiers, the saplings of valour, who are the
victims also of society’s short-sighted greed.
“People, oh people,
Why not seek tables of peace,
Councils of love.
Before the red rot of intolerance
Claims once more
The valiant sap of youth?”
As long as we cherish some private darkness, even repentance
becomes impossible. The right way to look to the Sun is not to gaze upon the
physical luminary which shines upon our planet, but to look to the Sun as the
symbol of knowledge as it rises upon our intellectual horizon, to comprehend
life by the law of love, and to make use of the material environment for the
progress of the pilgrim soul.
It is only then that he who looks to the Sun
becomes a Rocket of the Sun.
“Away from tongues steeped in fable,
Myths woven on looms of terror,
Away from spears of malice,
Black lances of revenge
Hurled to the heart.
Come out of darkness,
Out of the dungeons of shame,
Come out rejoicing,
Come out now,
As rockets of the Sun!”
We have great pleasure in welcoming this new
fire-binger to our common quest, the Promethean conquest of life.
The Father of Political Agitation in Travancore: G. Parameswaran Pillai: A Brief Life-sketch, by ‘Keraliyan’.
(Radh-Ind Publications, Trivandrum. 1948. 65 Pages. With a Portrait. Price Re.
1.)
This is a simple, straightforward, and an
all-too-short account of the career of G. Parameswaran Pillai, who pioneered a variety of
activities in the eighties and nineties of the last century. G. P. made history
while yet a student at Trivandrum College, for the Dewan could not tolerate his
journalistic tirades and got him expelled. From Madras, during his twenties, he
aroused, by a vigorous exercise of his vituperative acumen, the conscience of
his countrymen. While twenty-six, he organised a remarkable whirlwind campaign
in Travancore for the purification of the administration. At twenty-eight, he
became the Editor of the Madras Standard and he converted it before long
into a popular forum for the fearless ventilation of national grievances. He
was a staunch Congressman, an ardent temperance worker, a prolific author, and
a stentorian orator. Gandhiji in his Autobiography acknowledged the help
he was able to get from G. P. during the South African Passive Resistance
movement. In fact G. P. had specialized, more than all else, in this subject,
and the stirring speeches against racial discrimination he made before the
Congress at Poona, Madras, and Calcutta sound quite modern today, in spite of
Agreements, Pacts, Resolutions, and Sanctions! In 1897, G. P.’s famous book, Representative
Indians, was published by Routledge & Sons and it won for him instant
recognition as a writer and interpreter. A defamation suit filed against the Madras
Standard by Sir V. Bhashyam Iyengar ended G.P.’s connection with the paper.
Undaunted, he said, “I mean to live all this down; I shall yet conquer.” He
went to England and joined the Inns of Court. During the three years of his
stay, G. P. placed his incisive pen and persuasive tongue at the service of
Dadabhai Naoroji and Romesh Chunder Dutt the British Indian Congress and the
London Indian Society for advocating the cause of India. Gandhiji wrote to him
from Durban in 1901 to promote a deputation to the British Government on the
South African Indian issue. G.P. returned to India in 1902 and bean legal
practice at Trivandrum, with the prospect of long years of public service ahead
of him, but death snatched him away from the scene of his tireless labour at
the early age of thirty-nine. Surely, a meteoric career of storm and stress! We
feel that G.P. deserves a more voluminous biography from the pen of
‘Keraliyan’. We suggest that he may take up the task and give us more of G.
P.’s correspondence with the stalwart patriots of his age, for that will make
the book even more authentic and attractive.
Edgeways and The Saint: Poems and A Farce, by Harindranath
Chattopadhyaya (Nalanda Publications, Bombay. Pp. 54. Price, Re. 1-8.)
The farce is about an opium eater-cum-murderer who
while asleep on the roadside is discussed by a crowd of ignorant admirers and
critics (including two men, each called Seventh Man!), as saint, sinner,
miracle-worker, and moron, until a police constable luckily arrests him and
leads him off. The theme is rather trite and the execution of the play leaves much
to be desired. Of the twenty poems Contained in this book, some are, we regret
to note, heavy with complex artificiality, as:
O wonderful wide being interims
Of dreamless vasts which burgeon and endure
Star-fired and nude
With exquisite creation-haunted solitude;
while others are frankly commonplace:
All is a terrible miraculous tension
Continued beyond human calculation.
A sudden Einstein with his fourth dimension
Dethrones a Newton with his gravitation.
Harindranath, however, has the genuine poetic gift
in him. He says: “I do not write only because I can, I write because I must.”
Hence, there are brilliant gems, too, in the collection, like:
Yon moon is but a bayonet wound
Plunged sheer into God’s azure throat.
It is a bleeding ugly blot.
I hope it will not rise again.
Kanasina Mane: By V. M.
Inamdar. (‘Usha Sahitya Male’, Mysore. Pp. 242. Rs. 3.)
This novel may well be called a study in Platonic
love. What equality of the sexes really implies and what society, and
especially the Hindu society, has to offer to a woman whose married life is
devoid of that mutual understanding and love which alone transforms the
formality of marriage into the union of souls, are the questions that Sri
Inamdar raises and presents in an artistic way here. As Sri A. N. Murthy Rao
points out in his lucid and interesting Foreword, the novelist is not bound to
answer the questions he raises; it is enough if he states them clearly and
artistically and Sri Inamdar has certainly done so. Reminiscent of Galsworthy’s
great novel. ‘The Man of Property’ in the emphasis it lays on the possessive
instinct deep-rooted in man, as well as in some of the situations depicted, the
novel is both interesting and thought provoking. The characters are generally
well-sketched and the heroine, Mohini, stands out as the most pathetic and
graceful of all. Only the character of Vasanth seems to be slightly sketched
and lacking in energy. Some parts of the novel are truly lyrical, and the work
is a good example of realism blended with imagination. Sri Inamdar has shown
sound aesthetic sense and artistic restraint in handling the theme of love,
especially of what narrow-minded society brands as ‘illicit’ love. He pleads
for purer mind and greater vision, also offering to the reader an interesting
story and a gallery of complex yet essentially human characters.
Sahasa: By B. Bhujanga
Rao. (The Hindi Kitabs Ltd., Bombay Pp. 150. Rs. 2.)
The theme of this historical play is the ‘Bloodless
Revolution’ which brought about the overthrow of the usurper Nagavarma by his
nephew and rightful heir to the throne of Karnataka, Mayuravarma. A play of
this kind demands a skilful interweaving of petty historical details into the
texture of the play without eclipsing the human interest. While tribute must be
paid to the author’s careful study of this historical episode to which the
wealth of detail bears evidence, it must be observed that the human interest is
not always well sustained. The speeches are too literary in style and the
characters are lacking in depth and complexity. A more pathetic effect could
easily have been secured by portraying at greater length the mental conflict of
the Lady Macbeth-like character, Charudevi. The play, however, renders valuable
service in acquainting the people of Karnataka with at least one period of
their glorious history, at a time when a knowledge of our country’s history is
needed by all who aim at developing political freedom into mental and cultural
freedom.
It is strange that the Introduction, giving a brief
account of the historical events which form the theme of the play, does not so
much as mention the dates of these events.